1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to improved data processing systems and in particular to improvements in the presentation of data within a data processing system. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to improvements in the display of data within a display window in a data processing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
The manipulation of data in a data processing system is well known in the prior art. Data may be manipulated in many ways in a modern state-of-the-art data processing system including: data accessing; data encoding data communications; data compression; data conversion; data entry; data exchange; data linking; data locking; data mapping; data modeling; data processing; data recording; data sorting; and data transferring. The large amounts of data which are available to the user of a modern state-of-the-art data processing system often become overwhelming in magnitude and complexity.
As a result of the increasing complexity of data processing systems, attempts have been made to simplify the interface between a user and the large amounts of data present within a modern data processing system. One example of an attempt to simplify the interface between a user in a data processing system is the utilization of a so-called graphical user interface (GUI) to provide an intuitive and graphical interface between the user and the data processing system. The common user access (CUA) user interface is an example of one such GUI. Common user access is a trademark of the International Business Machines Corporation. The CUA user interface is often employed to organize and present large amounts of data to a user in a graphical and intuitive manner. More information on CUA interfaces may be found in systems application architecture common user access guide to user interface design, SC34-4289-00 available from International Business Machines Corporation.
A window, such as window 2 in FIG. 1 is employed to display lists or collections of data, such as items X to X+9 in subsets A to D. Frequently, indication of a subset of these data collections to the user is a requirement because of some significant distinguishing characteristic of the given subset's members. Standard and state-of-the-art methods for indicating subsets already exists, but these methods have a common failing. In particular, when the subset cannot be completely displayed on the display device, existing methods provide no indication to the user about the extent of the subset. Under the existing methods, the user must page up and down using a scroll bar 4 to determine the size of the subset. Also, if the application supports a cursor within the collection or list, current methods also fail to provide feedback as to the user's current relative location within the subset. Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved method and system for graphically indicating subsets to a user that can provide a user an indication of the extent of the subset.